by Mary Grow

There are still some left-over ponds and related information to continue the previous subseries, but your writer is ready to take – and to give her readers – a break from maps, water bodies and genealogies.

Instead, she will present the story of an often-mentioned, but in detail long avoided, historical event, the Malta War. (From 1809 to 1820, the present Town of Windsor was named Malta.)

The origins of this conflict go back to pre-settlement land titles, a complex topic; and the “war” itself has many surviving original documents that a serious historian would consult when attempting to describe it.

Fortunately, this series is not serious history, but history lite, or second-hand history, and earlier writers have done the research that will be summarized below.

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The chapter on Sources of Land Titles in Henry Kingsbury’s Kennebec County History was written by Lendall Titcomb, Esquire. This man was probably the Lendall Titcomb who graduated from Harvard in 1871, was a lawyer like his father and was mayor of Augusta in 1901 and 1902.

Titcomb discussed two types of titles. Some 17th-century settlers obtained deeds from the indigenous inhabitants, who, Titcomb said, occupied and used the land as tenants in common – all were part owners of an undivided tract –­ and assumed they were merely adding more owners. They therefore saw no problem selling the same piece of land to more than one person.

These deeds and resulting occupation and use of North American land Titcomb considered legally inferior to a title or license from the British monarchy. He did not mention, though other historians did, that the British land titles were created with completely unrealistic boundaries, because nobody in London knew the area they were describing.

After a summary of competing French, Spanish and British claims to North America, Titcomb talked about the 1606 Virginia charter and the 1620 New England Charter, both granted by James I (who ruled England from 1603 to 1625).

The New England Charter covered all the North American territory not “actually possessed” by another European power between the 40th and 48th parallels of latitude – that is, between the latitude of Philadelphia and the latitude of Gander, Newfoundland, north of the United States.

James I awarded the 1620 charter to the 40-man Council of Plymouth. This Council, in 1629, granted what Titcomb said was the “Kennebeck or Plymouth Patent” to “the Pilgrim colony.”

The 1.5 million acres covered 15 miles on each side of the Kennebec River from the north boundaries of Topsham and Woolwich upriver to the junction with the Wesserunsett, close to Skowhegan.

In October 1661, Titcomb wrote, the Plymouth Council sold the whole parcel to four men from Boston. These new owners paid little attention to their holdings; not until August 1749 did interest revive.

By then, Titcomb pointed out, inheritances had added many new owners who “were widely scattered, and knew very little of the extent or value of their lands.” After a series of meetings, in June 1753, the owners formed a new Boston-based corporation that was formally “The Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase from the late Colony of New Plymouth,” or informally either “the Kennebec Company” or “the Plymouth Company.”

In 1761, this corporation hired a surveyor named Nathan Winslow to divide into lots the land on both sides of the Kennebec River between (current) Chelsea and Vassalboro.

An on-line Winslow genealogy says Nathan was born April 1, 1713, in Freetown, Massachusetts, and died Nov. 22, 1772, in Falmouth, Maine. His parents were James and Elizabeth (Carpenter) Winslow, married in 1708. The family were Quakers, and James was the first of the family to move to Maine, getting a land grant and building a mill in Falmouth.

The lots Winslow created had very little river frontage compared to their depth – modern records would call them “spaghetti lots.” Alma Pierce Robbins, in her Vassalboro history, said the Proprietors had voted to have them 50 rods (about 825 feet, or one-fifteenth of a mile) wide and a mile deep.

Beyond the riverfront lots, Winslow laid out a rangeway eight rods wide; then a second tier of long narrow lots; another rangeway; and a third tier of lots. Some lots the Proprietors reserved for themselves; the majority they sold to people wanting to settle in the Kennebec Valley.

By 1766, Titcomb wrote, most of the lots were sold. Because the terms of sale required each new resident to build a house and start farming within three years and stay – or will or sell to a successor – another seven years, they were occupied as well.

In January 1816, Titcomb said, the current Proprietors sold all the unsold bits and pieces, like gores (triangular bits of land where survey lines didn’t quite match) and islands, to a man named Thomas L. Winthrop. He later sold to residents.

This description sounds like a logical plan to create an inhabited region. In practice, though, large areas were left vacant, and people without legally recognized titles began to fill them.

Linwood Lowden, in his Windsor history, said settlers who were unaware of, or deliberately ignored, the Proprietors’ rights began moving into the Windsor area before the Revolution. More came after the war, “settling for the most part wherever their fancy struck.”

A resident named Ebenezer Grover had surveyor Josiah Jones lot out 6,000 acres in Windsor in 1797, Lowden wrote. Grover and others sold lots, many to speculators who resold them. Grover had no legal title to the land he sold, and he knew it: Lowden wrote that some deeds said explicitly the sellers would not defend buyers against claims by the Proprietors.

The Proprietors did make claims, filing lawsuits to evict the squatters. They also recruited agents among the settlers to keep them informed of sales. From 1802 on, they hired surveyors to resurvey parts of Windsor and offered to sell the new lots to the people already living on them.

The squatters, who had paid for their land and were mostly cash-poor as they tried to make a living from it, felt they were being unfairly made to pay again. And, Lowden wrote, when they were hauled into court, they found the judges were often Proprietors or their agents.

Young men in Windsor organized to harass and intimidate the surveyors. Two of the group were Elijah Barton, mentioned last week, and – probably – Paul Chadwick. They drove at least one of the Proprietors’ spies out of town (Lowden quoted his appeal for help to the Massachusetts General Court).

On Sept. 8, 1809, according to Lowden’s description, Isaac Davis was surveying on Windsor Neck, the northeastern part of town, for a resident named Aaron Choate, who planned to re-buy his property from the Proprietors. Davis’s chain men were two settlers’ sons, Jones or Jonas Pratt and Paul Chadwick.

Lowden surmised that the anti-Proprietors saw Chadwick as a turncoat. Nine of them disguised and armed themselves and went after Davis and his team, especially naming Chadwick.

Lowden said some were wrapped in blankets like Indians, and all wore caps and masks, or “veils.” James North, in his Augusta history, described the “conelike” multi-colored peaked caps, from which the veils fell over the men’s faces, with holes for eyes and mouth.

At least three men had guns, specified as pistols in North’s telling. The rest were armed with what Lowden called “the pointed ends of old scythes fastened into pine handles.”

The “Indians” found Choate first. They waited until the surveyors came out of the woods to join him, Chadwick leading. One (Lowden) or several simultaneously (North) shot Chadwick, who died two days later.

The suspects were identified, some by Choate and the dying Chadwick, and arrested. Brought before a magistrate on Sept. 15, they admitted they were there when Chadwick was shot. They were jailed in Augusta to await indictment and trial.

In the interval, as described by Lowden and in more detail by North, their supporters began to fear harsh penalties and to plan a rescue. Word reached the authorities in Augusta of armed men preparing to free the prisoners, “burn the county buildings” and destroy Proprietors’ and agents’ houses.

During the earlier years of unrest, Augusta resident had organized the “Augusta Patrol,” described by North as a 28-man group who took turns patrolling the town overnight. Now, precautions increased.

Augusta officials put a cannon on the west end of the Kennebec bridge and enlarged the nightly patrols. The night of Sept. 29, North wrote, there was a false alarm that kept everyone up all night. Around midnight on Oct. 3, some 70 men actually did approach the bridge and get into a fight with its defenders (apparently without casualties).

“Alarm guns were fired, the court house bell was rung, the Light Infantry turned out, the streets were filled with people and a general uproar ensured,” North said.

In the next few hours, Augusta officials called several hundred armed men (these were organized military companies; North does not use the word “militia”) from neighboring towns to defend the jail and repel the expected attack. A field piece was borrowed from the Hallowell artillery unit, and sentinels were posted throughout Augusta.

In following days, temporary barracks were built to accommodate the out-of-town regiments, and sentry boxes for the sentries. Augusta “assumed the appearance of a military post during actual war,” North wrote.

The Supreme Court’s October term began Oct. 3. The grand jury indicted the nine men for murder and set their trial for Nov. 16. In the intervening weeks, the number of armed companies was reduced to two, with nearby towns contributing in weekly rotation.

North described the well-attended eight-day trial in some detail. Four judges presided, and, in North’s opinion, Judge Isaac Parker’s summing-up “apparently left no escape for the prisoners.”

But, North wrote, the long trial and masses of information and argument “were too much for the feebly discriminating powers of a jury formed after challenging peremptorily the most intelligent men who were called.” (The challenges he referred to were by the defense.)

After their first long deliberation, jurors asked whether they could give verdicts on some but not all of the defendants. When the judges said no, jurors deliberated another two days before acquitting everyone.

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Lowden listed several consequences of the “Malta War.”

One was an 1810 Massachusetts law specifically applying to anyone who disguised himself as an Indian, “or in any other manner,” with the intent of obstructing people, including surveyors, as they were carrying out laws. Such offenders “shall be liable to indictment in the Supreme Judicial Court” and, if convicted, fined and jailed.

Another consequence was the Proprietors’ February 1811 grant of a lot on the west side of the Sheepscot River to Lois Chadwick, “an infant child,” daughter of Paul Chadwick and his (unnamed) widow, because her mother and grandparents were poor and her father died in the Proprietors’ service.

In 1813, Lowden wrote, a Massachusetts commission recommended, and the General Court approved, a deal under which settlers were given “all disputed lands” in the Kennebec Proprietors’ grant, and the Proprietors were given “the township of Saboomook” instead.

(Saboomook was probably what is now the unorganized territory of Seboomook Lake in Somerset County. Wikipedia says its area is 1,435 square miles; its population in 2020 was 23.)

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892)
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993)
North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870)

Websites, miscellaneous

by Mary Grow

Barton Brook

Barton Brook, in northwestern Windsor, was almost certainly named after Dr. Stephen Barton, Sr. (June 10, 1740- Oct. 21, 1804), or his family.

The brook connects the north end of Mud Pond with the south end of Threemile Pond (which is mostly in China and Vassalboro). In his history of Windsor, Linwood Lowden wrote that in 1799, the stream was named Wonnamdogus, a Native name that is now Warromantogus.

Part of the stream goes through the lot on which Dr. Barton settled in 1803, Lowden said.

Find a Grave says Barton was born in Sutton, Massachusetts. On May 28, 1765, he married Dorothy Learned Moore, who was born April 12, 1747, in Oxford, Massachusetts, and died there Nov. 11, 1838.

The FamilySearch website says the couple had at least seven sons and seven daughters, born between 1765 and 1791. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in “A Midwife’s Tale” (based on the diary of Dorothy’s sister, midwife Martha Ballard), said they had 13 children, and Dorothy “was almost five months pregnant” when they married.

Not all the Barton children lived to adulthood. Find a Grave says at least their first three sons died in infancy or early childhood, and another site says they lost at least one young daughter.

The sons named as adults are Stephen, Jr. (Aug. 18, 1774-March 21, 1862, born in Oxford, died and buried in Oxford and called Capt. on his gravestone because he was a captain in the militia); Elijah Moore (Aug. 10, 1784-Feb. 22, 1849, born in Vassalboro, Maine); Gideon (June 14, 1786-May 30, 1878, also born in Vassalboro) and Luke N. (Sept. 3, 1791-1837, born in Oxford).

Henry Kingsbury, in the chapter in his Kennebec County history titled The Medical Profession, wrote that Barton came from Oxford in 1774 and practiced in Vassalboro until 1778, when he went back to Oxford temporarily. Lowden said Barton and “three of his brothers” settled in Vassalboro in 1776.

Lowden found Dr. Barton’s “ledger book,” in which the doctor recorded details of his medical practice. In Vassalboro, main activities included “pulling teeth, applying dressings, bleeding patients, inducing vomiting, dispensing pills and elixirs, applying plasters and opening abscesses,” Lowden wrote.

Among common prescriptions were myrrh and aloes (which would have worked as painkillers and antiseptics); “Mugs of Toddy and cider” (Lowden did not guess why); and “Pill chochia,” which Lowden translated as “red pill.”

The Bartons went back to Oxford in 1790 (or 1788 – see box) and stayed until 1800. Returning to Maine, they spent two years in Augusta and another in Vassalboro before moving to Windsor.

Ulrich quoted an Oct. 14, 1802, letter Dr. Barton wrote to oldest son Stephen, still in Oxford, inviting him to move to Maine. The doctor said the family was “getting some land” where the only neighbors for a mile around would be owls, and “the boys” – Elijah and Gideon, aged 18 and 16, Ulrich said – could make a farm “if they will work.”

In his Windsor chapter, Kingsbury said Barton built his log cabin in 1803 “on the meadow in the western part of the town.” Lowden said the family lived “many years in a log cabin.”

Dr. Barton was not with his family in the log cabin for long. He died of consumption two years after they arrived, Kingsbury said (Oct. 21, 1804, Lowden wrote), and is buried where “he and his sons [Elijah and Gideon, according to Lowden] bivouacked the night they entered the woods.”

Find a Grave calls the site “the Barton farm.” A monument – a granite stone, according to Find a Grave – marked the grave in 1892, but Find a Grave says it is no longer there.

Kingsbury said Elijah and Gideon and grandson J. H. Barton settled near Barton’s cabin. Gideon married Sarah Pierce (Nov. 27, 1787-Oct. 9, 1834), of Windsor (Kingsbury) or Vassalboro (FamilySearch). They had at least eight sons and five (FamilySearch) or six (Kingsbury) daughters.

In Lowden’s list of Windsor men who served briefly in the War of 1812, Gideon Barton is named as commander of the company in which Clement and John Moody and Rufus Choate (named in previous articles in this series) served.

Lowden called Gideon Barton one of the first storekeepers in Windsor. He did not know when Barton opened the store in West Windsor, but he apparently found an account book from 1814.

The historian listed more than two dozen types of goods in the inventory – shoes and clothing; pipes, tobacco and pen knives; “powder, flints and shot”; scythes and seed corn; yokes and bows (for draft animals); pickled herring and other foods, including of course rum and molasses; and “itch ointment.”

Lowden said Elijah and Gideon were two of the four owners of a sawmill built on Barton Brook sometime after April 1816, on Gideon’s land. The historian recorded ownership changes up to 1832; he did not know when the mill stopped running.

Kingsbury listed Gideon Barton as a selectman in Malta and Windsor, first elected in 1814 and serving for 15 years. Other Bartons served as selectmen, town clerk and town treasurer in the 19th century.

The circa 1834 petition for a dam across the Kennebec that Henry and Dudley Dearborn signed (see last week’s article) was also signed by four Bartons, E. M. (Elijah Moore), Gideon, Luke M. and Samuel W.

There was a Barton school district, Kingsbury wrote, “near R[ufus]. P. Barton’s.” The schoolhouse there was moved closer to the middle of the district around 1850 and rebuilt; it burned around 1889.

The West Windsor post office, Kingsbury said, opened Sept. 8, 1873, “at the residence of Ira D. Barton, the appointee.” Find a Grave says Ira was Elijah’s son (Dr. Stephen’s grandson), born in 1820 and died in 1898.

The 1869 atlas shows five Bartons – G., J. D., R. P., T., and W. C. – plus a schoolhouse and the West Windsor post office, clustered south of the end of Threemile Pond, near what is now the intersection of Weeks Mills and Barton roads.

G. was probably Dr. Barton’s son, Gideon, Sr. R. P. was almost certainly the doctor’s grandson, Gideon and Sarah’s son, a farmer named Rufus P. (1816-1896). T. could have been Rufus’s younger brother, Theodore (1824-1901).

W. C. must have been William Collins Barton (1808-1889), Elijah’s older son. Elijah’s wife was Sally Fairfield; your writer found no other information about her, and also failed to find a J. D. Barton on the various family trees on line.

One more family distinction: Dr. Stephen Barton was the grandfather of Civil War nurse and Red Cross founder Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton (Dec. 25, 1821-Apr. 12, 1912). Clara was the youngest daughter of Stephen, Jr., and his wife, Sarah “Sally” (Stone) Barton (Nov. 13, 1783-July 18, 1851).

Dorothy Barton younger sister of Martha Ballard

Dorothy Learned (Moore) Barton (April 12, 1747-Nov. 11, 1838) was a younger sister of midwife Martha (Moore) Ballard (1735-1812). Martha’s husband, Ephraim, first came to Fort Western to do surveying work in 1775, and he and Martha moved to Augusta in 1777.

Martha’s diary and related documents on which Laurel Thacher Ulrich drew in writing A Midwife’s Tale give more information about the Bartons.

Martha Ballard

Ulrich told a story from Dorothy and Martha’s childhood in Oxford, Massachusetts, before the Revolution, when American colonists were boycotting British imports, including tea (hence the Dec. 16, 1773, Boston Tea Party).

Dr. Barton, Ulrich said, was a member of the local committee formed to keep tea out of town. But when he was out of the house, his wife and sister-in-law were likely to provide “a cup of tea in the cellar for some sick mother in the neighborhood.”

Or, in the version Clara Barton shared as part of her family history, the sisters held tea parties in the cellar, hanging blankets across the door to keep the odor from the rest of the house.

Ulrich agreed with Lowden and Kingsbury that the Bartons moved several times before settling in Windsor. She said their return to Oxford in 1788 was from economic necessity: Dr. Barton was unsuccessful at “establishing a farm in Maine.” She surmised part of the problem might have been that their first six children (or, per Familysearch, six of the first seven who survived to adulthood) were daughters, unsuited for fieldwork.

The Bartons named two of their daughters Pamela and Clarissa. Ulrich said they were named after heroines of English author Samuel Richardson’s novels with those titles, published in 1740 and 1748, and concluded that Dorothy read the novels. Other daughters’ names she mentioned were Parthenia and Hannah; FamilySearch adds Dorothy and Mary.

When the older Bartons moved back to Oxford for a decade, Pamela, Clarissa and Parthenia stayed in Maine with the Ballards, Ulrich said. Parthenia moved into their household late in May 1788 and lived with her aunt and uncle most of the time until she married in November 1792.

By 1800, Martha Ballard’s health was failing. Ulrich wrote that one of her pleasures was her sister and brother-in-law’s move back to Maine.

Ulrich quoted passages from Martha’s diary about their return in May 1801 and her Sept. 1 visit to them, probably at “Mr. Crages Shop” where they lived first (or possibly in Vassalboro, where they moved later).

Stephen and Dorothy Barton’s son, Elijah, was involved in what historians call the Malta War, the multi-year dispute between proprietors, who claimed land titles from the British, and settlers, who might have alternative legal documents or might claim ownership on the basis of possession and improvement.

Windsor was a major battleground in this “war,” which culminated in a group of settlers shooting and killing a surveyor named Paul Chadwick on Sept. 8, 1809.

Elijah Barton was one of the eight men promptly arrested and jailed for the Chadwick murder. During the months before the mid-November trial, Ulrich wrote that the Ballards and Bartons spent time together, including, she said, an October night when the two sisters worked together to deliver a set of twins.

Ulrich wrote that jury selection for the trial of the alleged murderers began Nov. 16. The trial lasted about two weeks; the jurors acquitted the accused.

And, Ulrich wrote, on Dec. 3, Dorothy Barton and her four sons (Stephen, who was in Maine for the trial, Gideon, Elijah and Luke,) had supper at the Ballards’ and Elijah stayed overnight. “To all appearances, he was just another relative, just another visitor.”

Main sources

Kingsbury Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993).
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990).

Websites, miscellaneous.

CORRECTION: In the February 29, 2024, issue of The Town Line, the wrong photo of Martha Ballard was published. The correct photo has been added to this online version. It was an editing error.